The color of the Indian bullock varies. Some are a dirty white, some a cream
color, some almost pink, and a few are of the darker shades. They are about the
size of our cows, seldom as large as a full-grown ox. Their horns, which are
generally tipped with curiously carved knobs, and often painted in colors, are as
diversified in their styles of architecture as are the horns of our cattle, though
they are more apt to be straight and V-shaped. Their necks are always “bowed to
the yoke,” to once more use biblical phraseology, and seem almost to invite its
humiliating clasp. Above their front legs is the mark of their antiquity, the great
clumsy, flabby, fleshy, tawny hump, always swaying from side to side, keeping
time to every plodding step of its sleepy owner. This seemingly useless
mountain of flesh serves as a cushion against which rests a yoke. Not the natty
yoke of our rural districts, but a simple pole, with a pin of wood through each
end, to ride on the outside of the bullocks’ necks. The burden comes against the
projecting hump when the team pulls. To the centre of this yoke is tied, with
strong withes of rattan, the pole of a cart, that in this nineteenth century is
generally only to be seen in national museums, preserved as a relic of the first
steps in the art of wagon building. And yet as a cart it is not to be despised: all
the heavy traffic of the colonies is done within its rude board sides. It has two
wheels, with heavy square spokes that are held on to a ponderous wooden axle-
tree by two wooden pins. A platform bottom rests on the axle-tree, and two
fence-like sides.
The genie of the cart, the hewer of wood and drawer of water, is a tall, wiry,
bronze-colored Hindu. He has a yard of white gauze about his waist, and another
yard twisted up into a turban on his head. The dictates of fashion do not interest
him. He does not plod along year in and year out behind his team for the pittance
of sixty cents per day, to squander on the outside of his person. Not he. He has a
wife up near Simla. He hopes to go back next year, and buy a bit of ground back
from the hill on the Allabadd road from his father-in-law, old Mohammed Mudd.
They have cold weather up in Simla, and he knows of a certain gown he is going
to buy of a Chinaman in the bazaar. But his bullocks lag, and he saws on the
gamooty rope that is attached to their noses, and beats them half consciously
with his rattan whip. Ofttimes he will stand stark upright in the cart for a full
half-hour, with his rattan held above his head in a threatening attitude, and talk
on and on to his animals, apotheosizing their strength and patience, telling them
how they are sacred to Buddha, how they are the companions of man, and how
they shall have an extra chupa of paddy when the sun goes down, and he has